She's a new soul

Today in the library I was counting Rachel's steps. When I got to twenty I stopped counting. What else was I going to do? I had run out of fingers and toes but she kept on going.

So, she's officially walking. Crawling is a lot faster, so she still likes to do that, but she walks a lot, too. It's kind of creepy, actually.

I was in the bedroom getting dressed and she was playing in the living room, or so I thought until I heard a pitter-patter in the hallway. I looked at the doorway just as she came into sight. It was so strange to see her just standing there and then turn to walk towards me.

She walked so much today. She fell a lot, too. When Andrew came home he noticed the scratch on her nose, and her knees, and the tops of her feet, and her hands, and... Walking is hard to get the hang of, but she's doing it!

To commemorate this day, we tried to make a movie of her walking, but she was rather uncooperative. It was late--past supper, past bath time, and right before bedtime--and she was extremely tired so she's acting a little like a drunken sailor. Rachel gets out-of-control hyper before bedtime, laughing, playing and falling all over the place. Needless to say, she's falling all over the place in this movie. We'll get some actual walking footage tomorrow when she's less sleepy.

By the way, New Soul is my new favorite song. My mom introduced me to it last Friday and Andrew went on Amazon.com yesterday to buy it for me--he spent a whole $0.89! Isn't he sweet?

We thought it was a fitting song for a video of Rachel falling over and over and over again.

Learning to walk

Sometimes I wonder if we aren't all still learning how to walk. It seems to me that Rachel is just adding a few steps every time she tries. First it was one, then it was two, then three, then four. Today she went eight!

She just let go of Andrew's hands and walked over to her Grandpa like she'd done it a million times.

We tried to get her to show off a little bit later, but she wouldn't take any more than three steps.

Still, eight steps is a lot of steps for a little girl. I wonder when she'll take nine.

It almost makes me want to break out my pedometer just to see how many steps I took today. Then I can brag about it to everyone I see.

"10,678!" I'd say.

"What?" they'd say.

"I took 10,678 steps today! And I didn't even fall down! Of course, I had to stop and rest a few times, and I almost lost my balance once or twice, but still, 10,678 is quite a lot of steps for a girl my age!"

"Uh, yeah," they'd say, trying to placate me, "That's nice."

"But yesterday I only went 10,503 steps. I'm getting a lot better! This walking thing is really exciting! You know, I'm so excited I feel like I could hug something. Anything will do. You...or...this couch!"

The person would walk away, a little disturbed, while I would snuggle my face into the couch, just like Rachel does when she reaches her goal.

Perhaps it would be a little old to celebrate one more step--I'm sure we'll eventually lose count of how many steps Rachel can take (like when she really takes off running, which will be any day, I'm sure)--but maybe we are all still learning to walk. You never know when you could just forget how one day.